Chapter 19
We met for coffee after she got the kids to school. I almost didn’t recognize her at first. She wore her hair in a ponytail, had on no makeup, and wore yoga pants.
I sure hoped she’d started early on her plans to eat what she wanted and do what she liked, because it looked like she was going through it.
“How about I’ll get the coffee?” I asked as she sat down beside me.
“Sure,” she said, her eyes still distant, as though her mind were on something far away.
“What would you like?”
“Skinny cappuccino with—no. I’d like an iced white chocolate mocha.”
“Coming up,” I said. Nutritionists might disagree, but I felt it was important for Trista’s long-term mental health that she do what she wanted to do. There’d be time to go back to skinny cappuccinos later, if she wanted to.
I brought over a double-chocolate muffin, too. She reached for it, jerked her hand back as if she’d been scalded, then delicately pinched off a little piece.
“You had them warm it up.” Between the smile and the color in her cheeks, she looked like a new woman.
“It’s the little things in life,” I said.
Once again, I waited. Patience wasn’t one of my better virtues, but I’d learned to fake it until I made it.
Finally, she spoke. “Can you really help me find my husband?”
“Before I was a fairy godmother of vengeance, I was a private detective, so yes. I should be able to help you find him.”
“I can’t afford to pay you right now,” she said. “But I will find a way, even if I have to ask my parents to loan me the money, which I do not want to do.”
“I’m going to guess Blake disappeared with a chunk of change?”
“All our investment accounts,” she said with a sigh. “Most of the checking account. All our savings.”
It wasn’t even my money, but I still felt a punch to the gut. It was the injustice of it all, really. It never ceased to amaze me how shitty some people could be. The day I got used to it, I should probably go into another line of business. “I’m sorry. That’s just . . .”
“Shitty?”
“Exactly the word I was thinking. Let’s start at the beginning and go over the last time you saw him and what you do know.”
I grilled her mercilessly, and she took it with the same stoic grace she probably showed her gynecologist during a pelvic exam.
“I need to serve him with papers as soon as possible so I can stop the hemorrhaging from our funds,” she said, her brow furrowed.
“He probably doesn’t realize I know the extent of what he’s done because he never shared financial information with me.
I asked questions, yes, and the cagier he got, the more determined I became to do my own investigating.
Fortunately, I have an account that he doesn’t know about. ”
I arched an eyebrow. Good on Trista!
“I have no intention of hiding it, but a couple of years ago, I had a nightmare that he’d left us high and dry. I wanted to have something just in case.”
“And ‘just in case’ has arrived,” I murmured.
Unfortunately, Trista had no idea where her husband might be.
He’d never admitted to having another girlfriend, but she suspected.
She’d already checked the vacation home in Florida.
A different private investigator had told her that he was hiding out at Bel Air Apartments, and she hadn’t wanted to spook him while she was working things out with her lawyers.
Then I brought her the video of my Malone.
After I left the Monday of the Flocking, she’d looked for Blake everywhere she could think of. She’d called him, only to hear the prerecorded apology about how his number was no longer in service. In short, she was desperate.
I reached across the table to grab her hand. “He can’t hide forever.”
I, however, could hide like a champ.
I may or may not have gone on a long surveillance trip. My official reasoning was that Attorney Lawless had called with a job, and I needed money. My unofficial reasoning? I was ticked with Malone.
Here we were ready to do the deed, and then he ghosted me.
Sure, sure. I was the one who’d left him on Monday night, but I was coming back.
Surely he knew that. I got back late Monday night / early Tuesday morning, but he was gone before I woke up.
I waited for him the rest of the day Tuesday.
Nothing. When I got up early on Wednesday only to see his car wasn’t there, I decided I’d wasted enough time mooning over him.
When Attorney Lawless called, I took the job.
Either Malone was wrapped up in business and would get back to me, or he’d already left for California.
His leaving was a foregone conclusion, so there was no need for me to wait around the apartment and mope for him—especially not when I could make a cool hundred and fifty an hour working for Attorney Lawless.
So I hired Addie to take care of Brené Brown—the kitten, not the author, professor, podcaster, and shame researcher—and I loaded up the Corolla to go to scenic rural Alabama. Was it my first choice for a vacation? Absolutely not.
But then again, I wasn’t on vacation.
Even worse? It required camping.
I could tolerate being stuck in a motor vehicle for hours on end better than your average person.
As an only child, I’d learned to amuse myself at a very young age.
No brothers and sisters for me. Three elementary schools in six years, so I didn’t have the same attachment to my peers as many friends my age.
My mother was often gone. Nana was exhausted, and Aunt Edna was, well, a battle-ax.
So, while on stakeout, I remembered the lessons of my youth. I sang songs, listened to audiobooks, dictated fan fiction, debated with myself. Whatever it took.
But camping?
I supposed the bathroom question was a bit easier with camping, since I could usually pop a squat without taking my eyes off my target, but it was still fraught with the possibility of bugbites or thorns or bears.
I also had to slather on Skin So Soft to keep the mosquitoes away and keep vinegar and water on hand to get rid of the ants because camping meant sleeping on the ground.
Thus I didn’t do much sleeping. And the worst part was no campfire, which meant no s’mores.
You can’t have smoke and a fire when you’re hiding out in the bushes.
Especially not when you’re in a wildlife-management area to avoid trespassing but technically it’s not camping season, so you’d have to play dumb if caught.
Or, even worse, pretend to have a fondness for birdwatching in general and the red-cockaded woodpecker in particular.
TL;DR: I hate camping.
While sitting in the woods on the side of a mountain in Alabama, I attempted to ascertain whether a mother had transported her kids over state lines in violation of a custody agreement.
Normally, I would’ve also done some research for my other cases, but reception was nonexistent rather than spotty.
In fact, I thought I might lobby Attorney Lawless for a bonus for this particular job because I was surrounded by poison ivy.
To date, I’d been one of those lucky individuals who didn’t seem to be allergic to the vine, but if I ended up in a bathtub full of oatmeal followed by a liberal dousing of calamine, I would demand recompense.
Sadly, this wasn’t the first time I’d found myself surveilling a dilapidated trailer in the hinterlands between Cedartown, Georgia, and Piedmont, Alabama.
It was very much as I’d suspected: A number of people were coming and going—quite a few for a spot in the middle of nowhere.
They also weren’t staying very long. I could only conclude that our client’s wife was shacking up with a drug dealer of some sort, probably meth.
Eventually, the mother emerged from the dingy trailer I’d been surveilling with her two children in tow.
I snapped pictures that included the mailbox.
It wouldn’t be hard to pinpoint the exact location.
Was it mere miles over the Georgia-Alabama state line?
Yes. Did that still count as transporting children over state lines without the other parent’s permission?
Also yes. Did those children need to stay as far away from that trailer before it blew to high heaven? Most emphatic yes yet.
As I drove back to Marietta, I had to concede, however grudgingly, that at least my mother had never taken me to a meth lab.
Skip’s owner hadn’t been a bad guy. He might’ve been a good stepdad.
All these years I’d been resentful of how she’d left me at Nana’s house, but looking through a telephoto lens at the shell-shocked expressions of children leaving a dilapidated trailer had left me with a new appreciation for the serenity of Nana’s house.
Aunt Edna wasn’t the menace of my childhood she had once been.
Maybe my mother had been doing the best she could. After all, she was little more than a child herself when she had me.
But she’d said some things to me, things she couldn’t erase by sending me articles about not fearing my fortieth birthday. Maybe she had feared her fortieth birthday, but I didn’t fear mine.
Currently didn’t feel too great about it, but I didn’t fear it. One would probably have to have access to all one’s emotions to fear something, and according to Brené Brown—the author, not the cat—I’d put up all kinds of emotional shields.
But remembering my self-help book reminded me that Malone had read it, and that brought up the interesting idea that the universe could be trying to tell me something about him.
If I stuck my fingers in my ears and sang “la la la” loudly enough, would the universe hush?
Or you could give Malone a chance since he’s nothing like Ken or your father.
And how exactly did I know that? I’d known Ken for almost twenty years, and he’d managed to pull the rug out from under me.
As for my father, he changed after marrying Mom.
People changed all the time, so even if Malone were perfect right now, there were no guarantees he wouldn’t become a person I didn’t like.
A mosquito bit me, and I’d never been happier to be attacked by one of the bloodsuckers because at least it interrupted my thoughts.